Let’s now isolate the transitions. In the diagram below, each transition appears with the numbers of the beats it falls between (rather than just the beat it leads out of).
The episode includes 28 transitions. As one might anticipate with a story that follows a large ensemble of characters, it relies heavily on Break transitions. Eight of them appear in all. Turns, four in all, mark the shifts back and forth between the two storylines, the rescue of Don’s work life and the destruction of his family life. Three Continuations show us that, contrary to the usual structure of this ensemble show, this is a Don-centric affair, sticking with him for most of its length. The Breaks and Meanwhiles (most of which comprise the ending montage sequence) predominate at the end, when Don widens his world to consider his need for others, and the impact of his actions on them.
Also unsurprisingly for a show that regularly delves back into Don’s past, we see two Flashback and two Return transitions.
We see only one Outgrowth transition. Although this episode of the show features an unusually high number of Procedural beats, its Obstacles don’t require the characters to move from one scene to the next. Most of the heist scenes occur in one place, the Sterling Cooper offices.
10
Beat Analysis: “Home”
(from The X-Files)
When it first aired in 1996, during the fourth season of The X-Files, “Home” acquired an immediate reputation as the series’ most terrifying episode—and the harshest hour of horror aired on any network. The series’ groundbreaking overall structure has been built upon and transformed since its heyday.
Viewed in isolation, “Home” remains a model of tight, self-contained suspense plotting featuring not one but two classic—and classically opposite—iconic heroes. Let’s dig into its beats.
1) An ominous scene: a decrepit backwoods house, during a storm, with a scythe leaning up against a barrel. Encapsulated right from the first shot, this reveals the house as the problem, the question that must be answered, the source of the disorder that our iconic heroes must overcome. As such the introduction of the frightening house constitutes our first Procedural down note.
2) Inside the house: screams of pain as a horrifying, homespun medical procedure indistinctly unfolds. Because it’s unclear, the scene poses a Question: just what sort of operation is going on here? Even in circumstances less overtly dire than this, Questions typically land as down notes.
3) A baby is born, an umbilical cord cut. This Reveal provides an answer to the previous Question beat. However, given the continuing horror imagery, this doesn’t entirely play as an up beat, as Reveals sometimes do. This ends with crossed arrows at best.
4) Three shadowy male figures take the baby outside into the rain, as the ominous score continues to provoke our unease. Disorder grows, for a Procedural down beat.
5) They dig a hole in the muddy ground, even though the baby is still screaming. The prospect of infanticide escalates the sense of disorder even further, for another Procedural down arrow.
6) Flashing lightning allows us to see that the baby and one of the men are both disfigured—more horror, another Procedural down beat.
7) Indeed, as feared, they place the baby in the hole and begin to bury it. Disorder worsens, for yet another Procedural down beat.
8) One of the men wails, and another comforts him by holding his shoulders. After completing the burial the three figures stand sorrowfully together in the lightning-illuminated downpour. This is a Dramatic beat, in which the wailing man petitions for succor and gets it from one of the others. This unexpected moment of empathy for a set of monstrous figures implies an inner conflict for them, and ambiguous feelings for us: a Dramatic beat, resolving with crossed arrows.
9) Break to the credits—a Gratification beat for those who enjoy this classic series opener and its emblematic Mark Snow theme. Its familiarity, and the reminder that series heroes Mulder and Scully are about to show up and start dealing with this disorder, gives us a breather from the awful scene we just witnessed. Like any Gratification beat, its arrow points up.
10) A Break transition takes us to a sun-dappled field, onto which kids toss a home plate and begin to play baseball. The episode title appears: Home. The chyron transforms—this is also a place identifier, telling us that the action we are witnessing occurs in Home, Pennsylvania. This beat introduces the first part of the episode’s throughline, which takes the town from innocence to awareness. Every textual cue tells us to treat this as an up beat, the very embodiment of small-town American order. But with the visual rhyme between the muddy field the baby was buried in, and in the context of the previous horror beats, we can’t be blamed for taking this as a false order, a surface under which disorder remains balefully latent. That makes this an ambiguous Procedural beat.
11) As we watch the Norman Rockwell kids playing and bickering, our sense of unease relaxes—even if there is something off about the framing when the batter reflexively taps home plate with the tip of his bat. Even so, this beat conveys more order than disorder, so let’s mark it as a Procedural up arrow.
12) The batter fouls the ball over a wire fence. A particularly young, freckle-faced outfielder runs to the fence and looks on in despair. The ball has landed “on the Peacocks’ property.” In a series of Reaction shots, we see fear run through all the other kids—a Procedural down arrow.
13) One player finds a solution: they have another ball. The outfielder happily retreats from the fence, and the game resumes. Maybe they won’t have to deal with the house’s inhabitants after all, attaching an up arrow to this Procedural beat.
14) The batter leans down to cover his hands with dirt, all the better to grip the bat. Again we are reminded of the mud, and the horror of the burial. Another Procedural beat, another down arrow.
15) Play goes back to normal for a few moments—still in Procedural territory, but with an up beat.
16) Now the batter digs his sneaker into the ground, and blood spurts up around the toe. He steps up, revealing the buried infant’s hand. The disorder, the horror we feared, has now manifested: Procedural beat, down arrow.
17) A transition reveals that we have moved in time but not place. Intuitive, UFO-believing profiler Fox Mulder picks up the ball that the kids dropped, as he surveys the disorder of the crime scene. Skeptical forensic pathologist Dana Scully carefully examines the hole the baby was buried in. The discovery of the buried child has led directly to their presence on the scene, so this is an Outgrowth transition. The arrival of our heroes implies a movement toward order, as does the moment Mulder takes to casually indulge in a mimed pitch. Procedural beat, up arrow. Note how both characters appear in a way that visually recapitulates their iconic ethoses. Mulder, who solves problems through belief and intuition, sniffs the ball, trying to learn something through direct, sensory experience. Scully, who solves problems with science and empirical facts, uses a tape measure to record hard numbers.
18) As Mulder continues to play with the baseball, the inhabitants of the Peacock house come out onto their porch to observe him. The score underlines the menace they represent. This Procedural beat registers a down note. If Mulder cared about the porch people and wanted something emotional from them, the same beat might play as Dramatic. But throughout this episode their relationship toward him remains external—one of physical menace.
19) Scully lists the facts she’s gathered from the crime scene, visibly annoyed as Mulder continues to play with the ball. Although we might normally be unhappy to see our two heroes at odds, this is classic contrasting buddy cop comic schtick, an integral part of their charm as a pairing. The moment of amusing tension culminates when Scully tests his attention by deadpanning that she’s quit the FBI to become a spokesperson for the Ab Roller (a then-popular exercise gadget). This combination beat both kicks off their investigation (Procedural) and serves up some amusing banter (Dramatic). It follows our dictum on informati
onal dialogue by layering in an emotional element to enliven the scene. This beat reverses the usual pattern: here, instead of having a character work to get the information, Scully must work to provide it.
20) Mulder goes into a reverie about the role of baseball in his childhood memories, including those of his missing sister. In this Dramatic beat he’s offering Scully a confidence, petitioning her for acceptance. She responds with another deadpan wisecrack, but this time it plays like a genuine, if mild, rebuff, earning a down beat. Mulder raised the emotional stakes and she shot him down.
21) Invoking the theme of the episode, the horror that can lurk beneath bucolic appearances, Mulder claims that if he had his druthers, he’d live in a small town like this. Scully takes the opposite view: “It would be like living in Mayberry.” In this Dramatic beat she again distances himself from him, for another down note.
22) The local sheriff arrives at the crime scene, introducing himself as Andy Taylor—the name of the sheriff protagonist of The Andy Griffith Show, which Scully has just referenced. Mulder gives this a “Really?” This detail winks at the theme without advancing the story, and so counts as a Gratification beat, and thus an up arrow.
23) Taylor provides the explanation of why FBI agents have been summoned to deal with a non-federal crime, so often required in opening scenes of The X-Files. It answers a Question the narrative hasn’t posed, but that nitpickers in the audience want to see acknowledged. The Reveal gains some emotional weight when Taylor says they’ve never had a crime like this before, not in a town this small, making it a slight down beat.
24) Mulder notices that the Peacock family has been watching and asks the sheriff about them. Though visibly hesitant to discuss them, he gives a rundown on their lives as feeble-minded recluses who live completely apart from society. Though he dismisses their relevance to the case, our genre expectations for a horror story know that the Peacocks spell trouble. Again a Reveal has been layered with an emotional resonance that makes it a down note instead of a lateral one.
25) When pressed further, Taylor changes the subject. He talks about his love for his peaceful town, and how much he has feared the moment when the frightening modern world would come from outside to change it forever. In doing so Taylor petitions our heroes for proof that he can trust them. Mulder meets this petition by responding with appropriate gravity regarding the next step—a look at the unusual victim. We’re glad, if in no way surprised, to see him show respect for this sympathetic supporting character, so the moment plays as an up note.
26) As a result of that beat, the locale changes, making this transition an Outgrowth. We take in a ghoulish sight: a bundled object that must be the baby’s corpse, kept in the sheriff’s office fridge along with cans of Spam and a brown lunch bag. We’re back to the main Procedural thread, and a down note.
27) The Andy Griffith Show joke reprises itself when Taylor introduces Mulder to his deputy, Barney. Mulder asks if the last name is Fife, eliciting an exasperated response from Deputy Pastor. This jokey Gratification beat leavens the horror of the situation, providing an up note.
28) The so-called “clean,” so-called “examination” room that Taylor escorts them to turns out to be a cramped bathroom. He doesn’t want this done in his office, to shield the innocence of the citizens—who would know something was wrong if he suddenly locked it. This establishes an additional procedural obstacle while bringing in the episode’s throughline, innocence to awareness. Taylor wants to preserve the town’s innocence by shielding them from the horror represented by the corpse. The extra challenge imposed on Scully by this inconvenient venue ends this Procedural beat on a down note.
29) Nonetheless, Scully succeeds in gaining key information: she finds that though the baby had an unbelievable number of birth defects, it was breathing when it died, making its demise a murder. As grim as this information is, it gives them a lead to follow, a positive resolution to this Procedural scene. (You might count it as a Reveal, but this beat is more about catching the heroes up to what the audience already knows or suspects, giving them forward momentum.)
30) Scully empathizes with the baby’s unknown mother, who has given birth only to be cruelly betrayed by nature. This leads her to voice her own fears about motherhood. Mulder grants her petition for assurance with mild flirtation and a joke about his own family’s solid genetic history—“aside from a need for corrective lenses and a tendency to be abducted by aliens.” A Dramatic exchange that brings our heroes closer together adds an up arrow to the map.
31) Turning serious, Mulder tells her that they’re not facing an FBI matter. In a reversal, it’s Scully who informs Mulder they have a case on their hands: the pattern of birth defects reflects a multi-general mutation. That implicates the brothers, as likely products of in-breeding, and suggests that they kidnapped a woman, which would be a bureau matter. The disturbing implications of this Reveal make it a down beat.
32) As an Outgrowth of the previous beat’s discussion, Scully and Mulder go to the Peacock house. A pig’s head on the front porch adds to the unease as they give its front yard a cursory once-over—adding a down note to this Procedural beat.
33) No one answers when they knock, momentarily blocking them. Mulder is about to enter when Scully reminds him of the need for probable cause. He overcomes the obstacle, giving this Procedural beat an up note, by pointing his flashlight through the screen and revealing a suspicious pair of scissors. They head in.
34) They find clues confirming the involvement of the baby-killing Peacock brothers seen at the top of the episode—footprints matching the crime scene, and a bloody shovel. That’s enough to convict them: an investigative success, and thus a Procedural beat that points the arrow up.
35) Assuming the brothers have fled, they continue to search the house. But the camera pulls in on the desperate eyes of a concealed member of the Peacock family. We likely assume that it’s one of the brothers, though we will learn otherwise later. The external threat posed by the unseen watcher puts a downward spin on this Procedural beat.
36) A Break transition (back from commercial when seen in original broadcast format) takes us to Sheriff Taylor’s house. We feel relief when we see that he’s on the phone with Scully and Mulder, and that they are now back in their motel room. The threat suggested by the shot of the unseen eyes clearly did not materialize. This relief from that turn gives us a Procedural up beat. We might suspect that Taylor’s effort to set up a dragnet will come to naught, since they may not have fled the house as assumed.
37) We stay with Taylor as he gets his gun, previously established as something he doesn’t carry, out of its lockbox. With pained expression, he takes it out, suggesting that he, as the personification of the episode’s throughline of innocence to awareness, has begun to make that transformation. But then he puts it back again. Genre expectations will lead most viewers to worry about his decision to remain unarmed, worrying that the outcome of this internal Dramatic moment bodes ill. The arrow moves toward fear.
38) A Break transition takes us back to the house, where the three brothers emerge and begin to gas up their decrepit Cadillac. That can’t be good: this Procedural beat warrants a down arrow.
39) A Break transition returns us to Scully and Mulder at the motel. As Mulder futzes with the TV antenna hoping to get the Knicks game, they exchange more badinage about whether he’d really like to live here (the innocent place) now that he has awareness of its infanticide problem. Badinage means friendship offered and given, so this low-key Dramatic beat directs the arrow up.
40) Scully notices that Mulder’s motel room door won’t lock. He points out that “you don’t have to lock your doors around here.” This exchange continues to reference the theme but again, as seasoned viewers with genre expectations, we know that the inset shot of the broken doorknob foreshadows danger, for a Procedural down arrow.
41) Mulder reconsiders the danger and props a chair ag
ainst the doorknob. This lands ambiguously. The moment is funny, because he has done an abrupt 180, reverting to his paranoid awareness from his nostalgic innocence. It is also scary, leading us to fear that the brothers might try to come through that door. The beat is also divided between the Procedural (taking steps against an external danger) and Dramatic (Mulder’s internal conflict between innocence and awareness resolves in favor of the latter).
Beating the Story Page 21
